Meet a City Council candidate: Gregory Landsman

Oct. 9, 2013

Gregory Landsman / Provided

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The Enquirer

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Name: Gregory Landsman

Incumbent: No

Neighborhood: Mount Washington

Age: 36

Education: Master’s from Harvard University; bachelor’s from Ohio University

Job: Executive director of the Strive Partnership

Family: Wife, Sarah, and two children

Political experience: Held several positions under former Gov. and U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, including director of the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; ran David Pepper’s campaign for mayor in 2005.

About: Landsman says he wants to focus on job creation and growing the city. City Hall can’t do it alone, he says; reaching those goals will require building coalitions in the public and private sectors, and leadership is needed to make that happen.

He says he will draw on his experience as executive director of the Strive Partnership, a network of education, philanthropic and business organizations focused on helping students hit specific academic milestones throughout their academic careers.

It made sense to focus initially on improvements to Downtown and Over-the-Rhine, he says, but now it’s time to expand the approach that allowed the city and 3CDC to succeed in those areas in order to create similar progress in other neighborhoods.

Questions and answers

Do you support or oppose Cincinnati’s streetcar and why?

Though I was an original supporter of the streetcar, I became skeptical at the spiraling costs and borderline negligent mismanagement of the project. Council should not have given the city manager another $17.4M until new leadership was in place, an operating plan that was privately supported had been developed and there was a plan to get the streetcar to Uptown. Now that contracts are signed, money spent, and construction underway, we need to make sure that it gets to Uptown – and does so with private support. Otherwise, I do not believe it will be a smart investment.

Would you support efforts to repeal Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage?

Yes, and ... aggressively.

Do you support or oppose the parking lease and why?

No. While the Port Authority worked hard to make a bad plan better, City Hall should have pursued a much smarter approach: modernize the parking system (meters and garages) by borrowing only what is necessary to do so, and work with a third party, such as the Port Authority, to competitively bid the service contract.

Do you support or oppose the pension referendum?

No, and voters should oppose Issue 4. We need responsible and meaningful pension reform. My plan is to establish a transparent Pension Reform Committee, made up of financial experts, employees, and retirees to produce binding recommendations within 120 days.

Would you be willing to lay off cops and firefighters?

If I thought it was the right thing to do. The fact is, however, we need more cops on the street and we should end brownouts in Cincinnati.

Are you going to increase money for road paving, and where would you get the money?

Yes. ... This has to be a priority in the next capital budget, even if it means we delay other projects.

Do we need more code inspectors and health inspectors, and where would you get the money to hire them?

It’s not clear to me that we do. What we need is a comprehensive savings audit, using private support and leadership, across all city departments.

How would you increase revenue and/or cut spending to close the city’s annual budget gap?

In order to invest in what matters most, and attract new investments in our city, we must establish fiscal certainty – and do so as quickly as possible. City Hall must prioritize a structurally balanced budget, and get the following done:

• Pursue “zero-based budgeting,” requiring department heads to build budgets from scratch, in partnership with employees and the public.

• Get serious and public about shared service opportunities and require the city manager to bring before Council a shared service opportunity, with any other municipality or school district, every 60-90 days for a vote.

• Reallocate existing staff to establish a new council budget analyst to ensure a check on city spending and cost projections.

• Produce five-year operating and capital budgets to keep the city on track. ⬛